Apocalypse I: Terran Eclipse
by Mephistroth
Summary: Six months after the ending of Starcraft: Brood War. Zerg forces are in control of a broad swath of planets in the Koprulu Sector, and are beginning to consolidate their holdings. They begin by eliminating the last bastions of Terran resistance on Char
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: All Starcraft content is property of Blizzard Entertainment, as are the characters from Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War.  
  
This is my first Fan Fiction article. Please R&R, and enjoy!  
  
Apocalypse I: Terran Eclipse  
  
Setting: Six months after the ending of Starcraft: Brood War. Zerg forces are in control of a broad swath of planets in the Koprulu Sector, and are beginning to consolidate their holdings. They begin by eliminating the last bastions of Terran resistance on Char.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Prologue  
  
* * * * *  
  
"Command, this is Tango base. We need air support, now!"  
  
"Command, this is Foxtrot. We're being overrun!"  
  
The airwaves were so full of distress calls that there was hardly time for static in between them. After holding out against the Zerg assault for nearly three months of constant fighting, the last Terran base on Char, Delta Zero, was finally being overrun.  
  
For General Jonathan Freeman, it was the worst day of his life. He stared down at the tactical map table, looking at the waves upon endless waves of red dots crashing upon the ever-dwindling amount of green ones, feeling distant explosions through the soles of his feet. A Major looked over at him.  
  
"General, bases Tango and Foxtrot request assistance. They are being overrun."  
  
Freeman nodded, "send the Sabre, the Kursk, and the Canis to Foxtrot and send Demon, Lancer, and Frost squadrons to support Tango. Send dropships to both bases. Evacuate everyone. The battle cruisers are to fight a delaying action and allow those dropships to get those soldiers out of there. The same goes for the wraiths and valkyries."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"I wonder what else will go wrong today" Freeman wondered as he turned back to the map table, searching for some way to delay the Zerg long enough to evacuate the troops.  
  
* * * * *  
  
At Forward Base Foxtrot, the situation was going from bad to worse. The Zerg just kept coming in seemingly endless waves, and the Terran casualties continued to mount. There were so many wounded that the medics couldn't keep up with them all. Worse yet, everyone was running low on ammunition, and the siege tanks' barrels were glowing red-hot from the non- stop firing.  
  
Captain Ian Davis led his squad of goliaths through the base, dodging between buildings and wounded soldiers. His radio crackled.  
  
"Captain, they're reached the Pass. Support our troops there!"  
  
"On my way. ETA thirty seconds."  
  
The Pass was a steep, narrow cleft cut into Char's surface millions of years earlier, when water had still flowed freely. It was now one of the only entrances to Forward Base Foxtrot, and a well-defended one at that. Still, it would be overrun soon by waves of Zerg that stretched to the horizon, if it were not reinforced.  
  
Smoke from burning bunkers filled the air and tracers from bullets whizzed in all directions. Explosions rocked the ground and sent Zerg bodies flying in all directions, but there were always more streaming up the Pass. Purple-red lightning forked down from low, red clouds, providing stark illumination on the battle.  
  
Ian reached the battleground, and what he saw worried him. Three bunkers and several companies of marines were all that was left of the Pass defenses. Even Ian's company of twelve goliath assault mechs wouldn't be able to hold out for long against the Zerg onslaught.  
  
"Fang leader to Fang Company, we have to support those marines. Fire at will."  
  
Putting action to words, Ian pulled his triggers tight to the joysticks, raining hot metal death upon the Zerg besieging the Pass as Fang Company hurled themselves into the fight.  
  
* * * * *  
  
The situation at Base Tango was even worse than at Foxtrot. Tango was situated in a crevice in a cliff and, although it was only vulnerable from one direction, it was very difficult to defend because of the cramped conditions. Worse yet, the crevice opened up onto a flat basalt plain, which was currently packed solid to the horizon with Zerg monstrosities. Base Tango's last line of defense was a hastily erected line of supply depots. Brave marines and firebats stood atop the supply depots, firing down at the Zerg clawing their way through the barrier, but it wouldn't be long until the depots were destroyed and the hordes of Zerg swarmed Base Tango.  
  
Lance Sergeant Thomas Blake popped an empty clip out of his gauss rifle and grimaced. The Zerg were massing again for another attack.  
  
"Watch out, boys," he hollered at the other marines around him, "they're coming at us again!" He popped in a fresh clip and shouldered his rifle, taking aim at the mass of now-charging Zerg. As soon as the targeting icon on his HUD winked green, he clamped down on the trigger, firing fifty bullets accelerated to nearly eight times the speed of sound into the mass of aliens. All along the line of supply depots, other marines and a few ghosts were doing the same, desperately trying to buy time for the other defenders inside the perimeter. As the first zerglings reached the wall, firebats fired gouts of flame into the teeming masses, but nothing would stop the Zerg from battering at the supply depots until they all fell.  
  
The marine next to Blake fell backwards off of the wall, reduced to a pincushion of hydralisk spines. Glave wurms ricocheted up and down the line of defenders, ripping armor and causing havoc. Still, the soldiers fought on, desperately trying to keep the Zerg at bay.  
  
To no avail. A supply depot on the far right of the wall exploded in a shower of fragments. Zerg immediately began to flow through the gap, forcing their way into the compound in the face of withering Terran defensive fire. The first zerglings and hydralisks through the gap literally disintegrated, the target of all the remaining defenders in Tango Base. But the Zerg kept pouring in through the gap, and the rest of the supply depots were quickly being ripped apart.  
  
Blake jumped off the supply depot as it caught fire and landed heavily, feeling something snap in his ankle. A rush of automatically injected painkillers kept him from feeling the broken ankle, but it wouldn't hold any weight. A ghost leapt off the wall, hit the ground, rolled to his feet, and helped Blake limp to the line of defenders as the rest of the supply depots finally collapsed.  
  
"Fall back to the caves! We're being overrun!" Blake shouted into his radio as a massive wave of Zerg scrambled over the piles of rubble that were all that remained of the supply depot wall. "Where's our air support!?"  
  
A voice crackled in Blake's radio, "We're right here, Tango Base. Hold your positions, evac is coming ETA five seconds."  
  
Suddenly, an ear-splitting roar rent the air, loud even through Blake's sound-dampening helmet. Two squadrons of wraith fighters screamed down the 100-yard wide canyon, strafing the charging Zerg with every weapon at their disposal. Missiles and laser fire ripped into the Zerg with massive effect. Zerglings disintegrated under the onslaught, and hydralisks and even ultralisks exploded from the withering fire. As the wraiths pulled up from their strafing run, they released bombs, each of which blossomed into massive orange flowers of flame, adding to the carnage and confusion.  
  
A horde of scourges and mutalisks chased after the wraiths as they finished their strafing run. The wraiths immediately split up, turning nearly ninety degrees at high speed. The Zerg turned to follow one of the groups, but were suddenly swatted from the sky as a squadron of valkyries dropped from the low cloud cover and ripped into the scourges and mutalisks with a massive barrage of rockets. The surviving Zerg flyers, very confused, sped after the slower valkyries, but were torn apart by missiles and lasers as the two squadrons of wraiths completed their turns. The wraiths and valkyries made several more high-speed strafing runs on the Zerg armies, the valkyries using the same rockets that had decimated the Zerg flyers to deadly effect on the ground.  
  
Immediately on the heels of the wraiths, dropships slowed to land in Tango Base. They fired rockets at the canyon mouth that spewed clouds of thick black smoke. Within a matter of seconds, the mouth of the canyon was completely choked with impassable, caustic smoke. The dropships touched down in the base and began loading up the men and machines that had defended Tango Base. It didn't take long. The defenders had taken so many losses over the months of fighting that their numbers had nearly been cut in half. The dropships took off immediately, forming up with the wraiths and valkyries as they headed for Base Delta Zero.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Ian Davis was running out of ammo, running out of ideas, and running out of time. The Zerg had overrun the Pass, and were now running amok through Base Foxtrot. The battle had degenerated into a bloody close- quarters brawl. Davis's goliath had lost one of its missile launchers and walked with a jarring limp from damaged ankle and knee actuators. The three battle cruisers, the Sabre, the Kursk, and the Canis, were being hammered by a huge swarm of devourers, mutalisks, and scourges. The battle was quickly becoming a rout and there was no way out of it; the same force of Zerg flyers that was now picking apart the battle cruisers had destroyed all the dropships.  
  
A blast of acid from a guardian smashed into Davis's already-damaged goliath and ate away the last remnants of armor over the mech's reactor.  
  
A maddeningly calm voice sounded in Ian's ear, "Warning, warning. Fusion reactor shielding compromised. Meltdown imminent. Ejection strongly recommended. Ejection strongly recommended. Meltdown imminent. Ejection strongly reco-" the voice was cut off as Ian pulled the ejection handle and rode his ejection seat out of the dying goliath. As he drifted down he saw the goliath tip, and then crash to the ground. No explosion at all. Nothing.  
  
Muttering rude imprecations under his breath about the goliath's safety systems, he landed, and then hurried to the command center. As he stepped into the doorway, he looked back just in time to see a massive explosion demolish the fallen mech. Now thanking safety systems, Ian made his way through the command center, dodging panicked desk clerks and squeezing past sprinting marines until he got to the command room.  
  
The command room was in chaos, people running every which way and distress calls from the radio filling the air. Ian made his way through the confusion to the edge of the holographic map table just in time to see the gigantic battle cruiser Sabre crash into the ground with a massive explosion, the shockwave from which rocked monitors off of their mountings. On the map the two remaining battle cruisers, the Kursk and the Canis, started to retreat; obviously, someone at Delta Zero wanted to save the remainder of the force instead of having it fight and die in a hopeless battle. The Zerg seemed content to let the battle cruisers retreat, instead focusing their attacks on the beleaguered Base Foxtrot.  
  
Ian swore. Now the battle was even more hopeless than it had been when he ejected. There was only one solution left. He left the command room and headed deeper into the command center, working his way through choked hallways to the command center's connection port. He reached the connection port and went through an umbilical into another building. He opened a door, went down a hallway, went through another door, and into the deserted command room of the nuclear silo.  
  
He had to act quickly. Base Foxtrot had one tactical nuclear missile in the silo and three more ready to be launched in an underground storage chamber/manufacturing facility. Ian planned to set them all off and give a lot of Terrans a quick, painless death instead of being torn apart by the Zerg. He went to the keyboard, and started typing in strings of commands. He bypassed security firewalls and hacked his way into the system until he found a file labeled "Broken Arrow." Broken Arrow was the old military term for a military unit that had been broken and was beyond all hopes of survival. In olden days, the Broken Arrow signal brought in any available fighter jets to strafe the enemy soldiers at point-blank range from the friendly soldiers. Now, it was a last-ditch emergency protocol, only to be used when there was no chance of survival. It would set off all of a base's stored nuclear missiles simultaneously, preventing a base from falling into enemy hands and keeping the enemy from taking any prisoners.  
  
Ian typed in a last string of commands, uttered a short prayer, and then hit the "execute" key.  
  
For a few seconds, nothing happened.  
  
Then, everything went white-hot. 


	2. Calm Before the Storm

Disclaimer: All Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War content is property of Blizzard Entertainment.  
  
Chapter 1  
  
Setting: Four months after the fall of Char.  
  
* * * * *  
  
General Jonathan Freeman stepped into the war room and saluted, "General Jonathan Freeman reporting as ordered, sir."  
Admiral Joseph Steiner, the commander of the Terran Dominion Armed Forces, turned from the map table he had been studying, "At ease, General. Come in."  
Freeman moved to the map table, "Sir, I would like to apologize for-"  
"For what?" Steiner asked. "For holding out against the Zerg on Char for several months without reinforcement? For surviving the longest of any Terran base on Char? For taking on the combined might of the Jorgumand and Tiamat Broods and still managing to withdraw with a sizeable amount of your command left? No, General. No apology is needed. Your stand on Char bought us time, valuable time that we needed to salvage our situation. Still, the Zerg have taken several key worlds."  
Steiner turned to point at several worlds on the map, "In their first wave, the Zerg took Köln, Avon, Sierra, and Bremen. Avon and Bremen are crucial mining and manufacturing worlds. We need you to take them back from the Zerg. I am placing you in command of the Third Fleet for this task. Avon will be your first target, as it is less heavily defended. You will then use Avon as a staging area to attack Bremen. You are authorized to use all available force to achieve your objectives, buy try to keep as many of the mining and manufacturing facilities intact as possible. Good luck. Dismissed."  
Freeman saluted, "Yes, sir," and left for the spaceport.  
  
* * * * *  
  
A knock sounded at Thomas Blake's door. "Come in," he said, looking up from the report he was writing at the desk.  
  
The door opened and a soldier walked in and handed him two envelopes. "Mail for you, sir," he said, then saluted and left the room.  
  
Blake looked at them. Both letters were from General Freeman, his commander on Char. The first envelope contained a letter of commendation for his actions on Char, a promotion to Lieutenant, and new rank insignia. The second envelope contained documents for Blake's transfer to the Third Fleet's ground forces, to command a combined-arms platoon. It also contained orders to report to the Third Fleet's ground forces' staging area as soon as possible.  
  
* * * * *  
  
During the dropship ride up to the Third Fleet's massive command ship, the Mjollnir, Freeman had a good chance to look over the Fleet's impressive manifest. The Third Fleet consisted of twelve of the new Archangel-class battle cruisers, thirty-two of the standard Behemoth-class battle cruisers, fifty-six Talon-class frigates, sixteen Explorer science vessels, twenty-four Leviathan-class troopships, seventy-two squadrons of CF/A-17G wraiths, forty-eight squadrons of valkyries gunships equipped with the new seeker rockets, and sixteen squadrons of the brand-new Aesir interceptors.  
  
The Archangel battle cruisers were a new design only recently put into battle. They were nearly three times as large as Behemoth battle cruisers and fairly bristled with laser cannons, missile launchers. They were equipped with new Yamato Gun technology, allowing them to select the power and spread of each shot, and even target multiple enemies at once. The power banks for the Yamato Gun had also been improved, allowing for a much greater rate and duration of fire. The Archangels were also equipped with shields, enabling them to take an incredible amount of punishment.  
  
The Talon-class frigates were also a new ship, designed for both space and atmospheric combat. The Talons were designed with the Zerg in mind, and so were very nimble and well shielded. They were armed with arrays of pulse lasers, flak cannons, and fragmentation missile launchers to cause great damage among the masses of Zerg warriors and fliers.  
  
The Leviathan troopships would transport the men, machines, and equipment of the Third Fleet's ground forces. Each one had enough space to carry a Terran combined-arms division, approximately four thousand soldiers, one hundred siege tanks, four hundred goliaths, and five hundred vulture scout bikes. They could land on a planet to disgorge their troops and machines, or they could ferry them down by using their five squadrons of dropships nestled on docking racks on the outside of the massive troopship.  
  
Aesir interceptors were another new design. They were incredibly fast and maneuverable, were cloaked, shielded, and had modular weapon hardpoints, allowing for an incredible variety of weapons to be attached. They also had a massive pulse-emission fusion engine, allowing them to travel at blinding speeds for short periods of time.  
  
Freeman finished reading the manifest as the dropship settled in one of the Mjollnir's auxiliary landing bays. A marine sergeant was waiting for him as he walked down the dropship's ramp.  
  
"Welcome aboard, sir. Please follow me to the bridge. Admiral Moore has been expecting you."  
  
"Lead the way soldier," Freeman replied, and followed the marine to the bridge.  
  
* * * * *  
  
"Welcome to the Mjollnir, General," Admiral Alan Moore's big hand engulfed Freeman's in a viselike grip. "I hope you'll find yourself at home for the next week or so as we travel to Avon."  
  
"Thank you, Admiral," Freeman finally freed his hand. How soon will we be able to depart?"  
  
"The last Leviathans are being loaded up now, they should join the Fleet in orbit in several hours."  
  
"Good. So, you're going to be commanding the space forces while I direct the ground operations?" Freeman asked.  
  
"Yes, that's correct. I'll try to give you mud-runners a little bit of help from above when I can spare it, though."  
  
"Excellent. I look forward to kicking some Zergs' asses with you, Admiral.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Two hours later, the last Leviathans joined the Fleet. The entire Fleet immediately set course for Avon, the first counter-attack since the Zerg offensive. 


End file.
